On
the eve of crossing the billion dollar mark, the
campus brought donors and scholarship recipients
together for a reception in University House. Nancy
Witter Bates and her husband, Jack, (center) are
surrounded by winners of the Jean C. Witter Jr.
Liberty Scholarship Fund. The students benefit from
a fund established by Nancy Witter's father in
1943.

Berkeley crossed a major milestone last week when the
fundraising drive it launched to help attract, support and
retain the best faculty and students crossed the $1 billion
mark -- bringing the campus closer to meeting its final goal
and to setting a record for university fundraising on the
West Coast.

The $1 billion raised so far represents more than 335,000
gifts from individuals, corporations and foundations, as
well as a more than 50 percent increase in the share of
alumni who give to the campus.

"Reaching the $1 billion milestone is a magnificent
accomplishment and a great tribute to our alumni and friends
who recognize that sustaining Berkeley's excellence now
requires both public funding and private support," said
Chancellor Berdahl.

"Successful fundraising means that we can continue to
provide California's top students an education at the
highest level. It also means that we can support and
encourage the kinds of research that will be needed to
sustain California's economy and contribute to the
well-being of our people in the 21st century," he said.

At the current rate of giving by alumni and friends, the
campus will exceed the announced goal of $1.1 billion well
before the Dec. 31, 2000 target date set by the Campaign for
the New Century.

Berkeley's fundraising efforts are on track to match or
surpass the most ever raised by a university on the West
Coast: $1.269 billion by Stanford in its Centennial
Campaign, raised between 1987 and 1992.

The Berkeley campaign is already making an appreciable
impact on campus. New endowments -- including 21
distinguished professorships, 46 faculty chairs, 120
graduate fellowships and 243 undergraduate scholarships --
are aiding the recruitment and retention of top faculty and
students.

The unrestricted Chancellor's Millennium Fund, a $50
million component of the drive, is helping Chancellor
Berdahl to restore the strength of the University Library,
create Chancellor's Chairs for new faculty, and expand the
statewide K-12 outreach efforts of the Berkeley Pledge.

Because many gifts are created as endowment funds, only a
portion of funds raised so far is available for current use.
This includes professorships, fellowships and scholarships,
where the principal is invested to ensure future growth. In
that sense, the Campaign for the New Century is true to its
name: Promising greater earnings well into the future.

Perhaps the most visible signs of the campaign are the
variety of capital projects launched by specific gifts.
These include the 12,300-seat Haas Pavilion, opening in fall
1999; the renovation of Hearst Memorial Mining Building; and
the new Jean Gray Hargrove Music Library.

In the remaining months of the campaign, alumni
volunteers in regions throughout the nation and overseas
will redouble fundraising efforts for such priorities as
University Library collections, the new East Asian Library
and Studies Center, and infrastructure needs in chemistry,
physics, the neurosciences and bioengineering.

Peter Haas of the Class of 1940 was chair of the
Chancellor's Campaign Cabinet, which raised initial gifts
and laid the groundwork for the fundraising effort. Once the
Campaign for the New Century was launched publicly in 1996,
leadership was passed on to alumni co-chairs F. Warren
Hellman ('55), John Hotchkis ('54), Carl Stoney, Jr. ('67,
JD '70, MBA '71), and Nadine Tang (MSW '75).